Sir Walter Raleigh: An Elizabethan Adventurer

Raleigh was to remain in the Tower, though he lived in great comfort, for the next 13 years. He spent his time composing verse and writing of his adventures. His wife was a frequent visitor and she would often stay overnight. Indeed, Raleigh’s son Carew was conceived whilst he was in prison. 

In 1616, he was released from the Tower on the promise that he could find El Dorado, the City of Gold. But there was no City of Gold, only the ever enticing prospect of being able to steal it from the Spanish. He attacked and ransacked the Spanish outpost at San Tome on the Orinoco River. But the days when arbitrary attacks upon Spanish possessions were seen as patriotic acts, were lauded, and reaped rich rewards were over. He returned home to London with little to show for his latest adventure and was met by the wrath of the Spanish Ambassador who demanded that James reimpose the death sentence upon Raleigh for this latest act of piracy. James was no friend of Raleigh’s, he remembered all too well his frequent and violent fulminations against his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. He did not take much persuading.

On 29 October, 1618, Sir Walter Raleigh was taken to the Old Palace Yard in the Palace of Westminster to await execution. He was eager to get it over with, ” Let us dispatch Executioner; at this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quake from fear.” Upon seeing the axe that was to be used to behead him he touched its blade and remarked, ” This is a sharp medicine indeed.” His last words as his head lay upon the block were, ” Strike man, Strike!”  

Though his popularity had waned since his Elizabethan heyday, Sir Walter Raleigh remained the great English hero and the execution of this evidently aged 66 year old man did not go down well with the public, and his death was viewed by many as an act of vindictiveness on the part of James. Indeed, a leading Judge of the time remarked, ” Never has English justice been so degraded and injured as in the condemnation of the Honourable Sir Walter Raleigh.”